JENKINS: Power play could weaken Oceanside's Big Three

In their finite wisdom, Oceanside voters elected to retain the status quo on the City Council.

Or more aptly, the status oh-no!

While every North County city has its stresses and strains, Oceanside’s political balance of power has been so violently matched up, so bitter and personal, that perpetual warfare is practically assured.

Oceanside is the only North County city in which a robust recall campaign ahead of the 2014 election is not only plausible, it’s nearly likely.

As a mechanic might examine a backfiring engine, let’s run through a few of the political dynamics that could lead to a fiery explosion:

The People’s Powertrain: Three-term Mayor Jim Wood is, hands down, the most popular public figure in the city. He blew away GOP-backed Councilman Jerry Kern and former Mayor Terry Johnson last month. Kern’s showing was particularly pathetic, not even a third of the vote. (Democrat Johnson was widely viewed as a spoiler siphoning a percentage of the vote from moderate Republican Wood.)

At the same time, Councilwoman Esther Sanchez, Wood’s Democratic ally, strongly outpolled the second-place finisher, incumbent Councilman Jack Feller. The message was clear: In a high turnout election, Wood’s and Sanchez’s brand of pro-neighborhood, pro-union populism packs a powerful punch.

Power Steering: Wood/Sanchez may have the popular strength, but their grasp on the real wheel of power is tenuous. With a weak-mayor form of government, a pro-business, pro-growth coalition — Kern, Feller and Councilman Gary Felien — forms a burly Big Three. They have the magic number at council crunch time.

Nevertheless, the ride is never smooth with Wood and Sanchez raising holy hell in the back seat. At every rest stop, the rock-ribbed Republican drivers express contempt for Wood’s and Sanchez’s abilities to steer, a negative view the liberal minority returns with force.

A popular mayor and councilwoman in perpetual battle with a marginally popular majority.

You couldn’t dream up a richer recipe for a chronic civic bellyache.

Brutal Power Shift: Following Kern’s abject failure as a citywide mayoral candidate, the majority has come up with a clever scheme to pump up its power while stripping Wood of one of his few meaningful perks of office.

According to custom, the mayor appoints reps on regional boards. One of the status seats is at SANDAG, the regional planning agency that doles out money for transportation projects.

Because Oceanside is a charter city, it can change its own appointment rules, or so the theory goes. The majority would like to remove Wood from SANDAG and appoint one of the Big Three to champion the expansion of major arterials, a feverish campaign issue that divided Wood from the pro-growth Kern.

As you’d expect, Wood has vowed to fight the taking of his power, not ruling out a lawsuit at city expense. He’s banking on his personal popularity to wash that costly pill down.

It may be an open legal question, the procedural change, but it’s clear, given Oceanside’s rough-and-tumble political history, that the pushback would be powerful if the majority bulldozes its way onto the SANDAG board and, in the process, cuts Wood down to child size.